Brookside Research, L.L.C.http://brooksideresearch.com
Primary Investment ResearchFri, 07 Dec 2012 15:46:30 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.5Brookside Research Featured on TheStreet.comhttp://brooksideresearch.com/brookside-research-featured-on-thestreet-com/
Tue, 04 Dec 2012 14:02:14 +0000http://brooksideresearch.com/?p=225Columnist Jonathan Blum and I have worked together in other lives. He asked for my insights for his Digital Skeptic column for TheStreet.com. Here’s the link to his smart column, which also happens to highlight what Brookside Research does best:

]]>Doing More With Morehttp://brooksideresearch.com/doing-more-with-more/
Thu, 20 Sep 2012 20:20:59 +0000http://brooksideresearch.com/?p=218Amid these trying economic times, we are often counseled to do more with less.

Which means deploying fewer resources to achieve a greater end result than we did before, when we had more tools at our disposal.

Indeed, sometimes the immediate financial situation requires the clever use of limited funds.

But never forget for a minute that just a few extra resources — more research, more opinions, more diligence — might give you the slightest edge you need to excel.

Bluntly speaking, making the right decision is far more important than making the most immediately frugal one.

Apple’s new iPhone 5, is an improvement in nearly every way over its predecessors, according to most reviews so far. But will it change your life if you’re already an iPhone owner? Probably not.

Meanwhile, Apple’s stock price shows every indication of being a game-changer. After the announcement of the iPhone 5, the company’s stock jumped above $700 per share for the first time. Now you can buy an iPhone, or even an iPad, for less than the price of a single share of Apple. So which is a better deal?

Clearly this is a matter that requires more independent research, as well as a bit of soul-searching. Has Apple’s stock price peaked? Has the utility of the iPhone peaked? Whatever your personal answer may be, it should have little to do with today’s headlines.

]]>Maybe You Don’t Know Something You Think You Already Knowhttp://brooksideresearch.com/maybe-you-dont-know-something-you-think-you-already-know/
Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:18:21 +0000http://brooksideresearch.com/?p=212It may be that you’ve always known it. Or that you once did the research, and thoroughly educated yourself. In any case, now you regard yourself as an expert on the subject.

You’re probably wrong. It’s the areas in which you consider yourself most knowledgeable that there may be an Achilles’ heel.

Unbiased, in-depth research is a great tool to uncover what you don’t know about an industry, company or management team. Chances are good you’ll learn something of value that you assumed you were already smart enough to know.

True intelligence is knowing what you don’t know, and learning independently what you thought you already knew, but didn’t.

]]>Mountain Lion Roars, Apple Snores?http://brooksideresearch.com/mountain-lion-roars-apple-snores/
Wed, 25 Jul 2012 21:27:55 +0000http://brooksideresearch.com/?p=207The masses used to await each new Apple announcement with an anticipation approaching Beatlemania. Steve Jobs was great at creating excitement around every new product his company released. He did this by withholding just the right amount of information until the very last moment, and then revealing something new and amazing with his signature “One more thing.” That “one more thing” was a product of months of research and planning, leading up to a casually tossed-off moment of pure marketing muscle.

Without Jobs’s presence, Apple has its work cut out. Today’s announcement of a new operating system, Mountain Lion, for the company’s Mac computers, was met with a combination of praise and collective yawns. Yes, Mountain Lion, is an improvement over its predecessors — for one, it creates a more seamless environment for those using iCloud. For those who don’t already use it, iCloud is amazing. It syncs your calendars and other information across all your devices. It works on non-Apple devices, but Mountain Lion works better if you’re an all-Apple kind of person. So some critics are saying that it forces you into an Apple-only universe. Those are the same critics, in some cases, who are cackling about the fact that Apple missed its revenue estimates for its latest quarter by around $2 billion, with lower-than-expected iPhone sales.

None of this matters. Apple remains a technology powerhouse. And while Steve Jobs was a marketing genius, the company can still capture the kind of attention he often did if it just put the same amount of research and planning into each new product announcement as Jobs did.

Lots of tech companies produce pretty amazing products these days. But very few release them in a way that shows they understand the complete environment into which they’re launching them. Great technology speaks for itself, but in today’s cluttered information universe, that’s sometimes not enough. You have to build drama, tell a story, remind people why they should be passionate about what you do. That requires understanding which stories they thirst to hear, and telling them in a way that grabs them and makes them sit down and listen. That requires gathering all the relevant stories out there and making sure yours is the best, most gripping and most relevant. Sometimes “genius” just refers to those who are willing to dig deeper to find the thing, the idea, the most relevant piece of information, and deliver it at just the right moment to just the right audience. That’s what breaks through and makes it all come together. And one more thing…..See what I mean?

As it stands, discerning what is true and what is hearsay often takes hard work. But even in a world where many forces conspire to manipulate hard facts, the truth carries great value. Think of the recent controversy over alleged manipulation of the LIBOR rate by Barclays and other large banks. Many parties regarded those rates as accurate, even as others knew they weren’t.

Funny thing is, the truth has a way of filtering out eventually. Those who already know what is verifiably true, thanks to their own independent due diligence, hold a distinct advantage.

]]>Asking the Right People the Right Questionshttp://brooksideresearch.com/asking-the-right-people-the-right-questions/
Thu, 07 Jun 2012 14:27:30 +0000http://brooksideresearch.com/?p=194Smart people try to be aware of what they don’t know. Smart researchers try to go one step further and explore what they don’t know to determine if it is knowable. Then they set about gathering that information, analyzing it, and ultimately, hopefully, increasing the amount of information they do know.

The job of an independent investment researcher doesn’t seem that hard on the surface. And it isn’t — at least on the surface.

Knowing where to find the right people to answer your questions is only the first step. Being able to ask those people the most relevant, most timely questions in a manner that elicits the most meaningful answers is the next step. Then come weighing the importance of such information, its validity and how it fits in to the larger picture.

In sum, it’s important to consider the whole journey. Knowing what you don’t know is important. Knowing that you know all that can be known at a precise moment under a specific set of circumstances is crucial.

]]>The Importance of Being Socialhttp://brooksideresearch.com/the-importance-of-being-social/
Tue, 05 Jun 2012 21:35:59 +0000http://brooksideresearch.com/?p=188Social media has reached a tipping point in the corporate world. How important is the social component? It depends who you ask.

Just be clear, the underlying need being fulfilled by social media is not trend-related. It’s all about the data.

There never has been as much data available to help companies parse their marketing strategies. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to know how to use it. As corporations refine their online strategies, they need more and more tools to track the results of those strategies.

Salesforce.com’s deal to buy Buddy Media for $689 million is evidence of this trend. Salesforce.com sells software as a service and has benefited from its expansion into the cloud, where it will no doubt deploy its new social media tools.

Enterprise tends to trail consumer interest in Internet applications, and social media is no different.

Buddy Media allows its customers to build integrated social media applications into their Web presences and then mine the resultant data to hone their marketing strategies.

Automated marketing research is a trend that’s here to stay. It’s practically what Web 2.0 is built on. My guess is that the bigger social media gets in the enterprise space, the more valuable old-style investigative research will become. Social media is important until everyone is using it. Then it’s on to something else that generates a different kind of data.

]]>Is SpaceX a NASA Killer?http://brooksideresearch.com/is-spacex-a-nasa-killer/
Tue, 22 May 2012 22:48:31 +0000http://brooksideresearch.com/?p=186NASA is dead, at least as we know it. And Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, the commercial space travel company, is its killer. That’s because SpaceX launched the first private spacecraft on Tuesday from Cape Canaveral carrying cargo to the International Space Station. It’s smaller than an Apollo rocket, but don’t kid yourself: NASA may have expressed delight and support for the unmanned SpaceX Neptune 9, but this is the end of business as usual for the national space program. SpaceX is a disruptive force.

Musk, who launched SpaceX with $100 million of his own money, has been open about his belief that space travel has been hindered by bureaucracy. And that’s what NASA’s all about: bureaucracy. NASA has commissioned SpaceX to arrange a manned Dragon craft, which will be transported by the Neptune 9, for 2015 through its commercial division. But SpaceX has plenty of other clients too, including some in the private sector and the U.S. military. Richard Branson also has a space travel company, Virgin Galactic. NASA could end up as a footnote in space travel history.

Space travel has its detractors. Over time, NASA has had trouble justifying spending government dollars on what some consider pipe dreams, especially when the U.S. economy is ailing.

But Elon Musk wants to establish regular commercial service to Mars. He wants to create a permanent settlement on Mars.

To nonbelievers, Musk sounds like a nut job. But those who have done their independent research know he speaks from knowledge. Musk couldn’t have created SpaceX without the groundwork laid by NASA. But it is by carefully reanalyzing the facts and adding to them that he has been able to change space history in a day.

NASA can’t be happy about that. But everyone else should be.

]]>Partial Solar Eclipse Is Wholly Incrediblehttp://brooksideresearch.com/partial-solar-eclipse-is-wholly-incredible/
Wed, 16 May 2012 22:26:51 +0000http://brooksideresearch.com/?p=182Eclipses are cool. They’re one of the best reminders of how big the universe is. You’ll only be able to see the partial or annular solar eclipse this Sunday from parts of the West Coast and Asia. But if you get a glimpse, no doubt it’ll be worth it. They say it will look like a ring of fire around the moon.

In ancient cultures, eclipses were sometimes thought to be bad omens. Nowadays, we welcome them with awe and wonder.

How many other things are interpreted in a negative light until we learn more and take a broader view? For this partial eclipse, the University of Colorado at Boulder will be hosting the world’s largest eclipse-watching party at Folsom Stadium, complete with concessions selling special protective viewing glasses.

Oh yeah, I should have mentioned that earlier. Don’t look directly at the eclipse with out protection. It can permanently damage your retinas. No amount of understanding or knowledge can change that.

Managing risk is knowing about what you can control and what you can’t. The partial solar eclipse is a reminder that what you can’t control or comprehend can still be experienced wholly at a distance. Just be sure to do your research so you know what you’re looking at and how to view it.